


stay safe

by seventhswan



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Female POV, Gen, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-05
Updated: 2014-12-05
Packaged: 2018-02-28 06:52:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2722847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhswan/pseuds/seventhswan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elsa has to try.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stay safe

**Author's Note:**

> I really thought this was (vaguely) where the movie was going to go, actually. Written under time limit.

Anna was the one warm thing – the one solid thing, the one iceless thing, the one thing in Elsa’s Arendelle not made of glass – but now she too glitters cold and unyielding, her soft mouth open, her arm thrown up against the world. The world is a colorless wasteland. Elsa’s glass heart shatters, the pieces lodging in her lungs.

It’s over, and what will Elsa do? Have her sister carried to the castle, make her into a fountain? Watch while the people flood through the castle gates and kneel, weeping, at the crystal feet of the girl who should have been queen? Will Elsa plant a garden to her, erect a plaque? _Here lies Anna the beautiful, Anna the great and good? Here lies Anna, who deserved to be loved by someone else, someone whose love would be enough to save her?_

Elsa will crucify Hans, slowly, torture him. She’ll carve out his black heart and freeze it, keep it in a box. She’ll show it to foreign dignitaries, stumble around drunk and mush-mouthed at banquets, then she will thaw it, milk it and brew poisons. She’ll be the witch queen, wild, dangerous.

No.

 _Reverse it_ she thinks, savagely. She digs her fingernails into her useless arm, her flesh and blood arm. _Reverse it, you useless curse. Do something right, for once._

There was a story the queen – the old queen – used to read to her daughters when they were small and still slept in the same bed. A princess was turned into a swan, and the queen cried tears into her white wings to bring her back.

It was Anna’s favorite, she asked for it again and again. The princess was foolish, rash, uncaring, the queen soft, good, sweet. It was Anna’s favorite story.

 _Reverse it_.

“Anna, I can’t,” Elsa sobs.

“I can,” Anna says, and there is light. The ice reverses itself, turning to water and running along her golden limbs. Anna is on fire, and everywhere there is the sound of rivers running again all over the kingdom, clocks restarting, flowers lifting their heavy heads towards Anna, the princess, the sun.

|

After the kingdom is secured and Elsa is queen once more, she works her magic so hard in service to her people that her hands are frayed and chapped, bloody, with the cold. She sits in the study at night with Anna before a roaring fire, and soaks them in bowls of oil that Anna heats for her with a wave of her hand.

“You shouldn’t work yourself so hard, you know,” Anna says. Those big bright eyes are relentless, sharp, as though Anna knows that sometimes, just sometimes, Elsa loses the feeling in the tips of her fingers, her toes.

“I know,” she sighs. Anna’s skin fell from her in ribbons for a week after her magic burst her from the glass cocoon of Elsa’s. The new skin was perfect, umblemished.

Anna sets her stubborn mouth, and says nothing.

|

Anna starts accompanying Elsa to all official events. She sparkles, charms dignitaries, has all Arendelle’s officials under her thumb. Anna is the sun, and Elsa is the shadow, the warning behind her. 

Watching her, Elsa knows they should have known that Anna was summer where Elsa is winter. On the coldest nights, when they were children, Elsa would whisper _Anna, I’m freezing_ , and Anna would press the soles of her feet against Elsa’s shins, giggling. Those feet were always warm. Her ice-cream always melted the fastest. When she grazed her knees chasing butterflies in summer, they healed almost instantly. Little things.

At full power, now, Anna shines. The butterflies chase her, and flowers grow at her touch.

Anna turns to her frequently on these diplomatic trips, her expression hopeful, open, guileless - _is this alright? Are you alright?_

The Queen of Arendelle smiles, grateful, and nods.

|

When they walk through the gardens at night, long after most of the castle lights have been extinguished, Anna has to grip Elsa’s arm carefully. Her night vision has deteriorated lately.

“Wow,” Anna laughs softly, just as Elsa bears the brunt of her catching the edge of her boot on a rock and keeps them both upright, both steady.

Anna had several glasses of wine at dinner, and it makes Elsa laugh.

"Be careful," she says.

If Elsa is the night, then Anna is the dawn. By all rights, the two should never be able to coexist - but here the moon could testify to them both, their feet on the grass together, the steps they take in sync. 

“Elsa,” Anna says giddily, childlike, with a tug on Elsa’s elbow, pulling her out of herself. “Help me count the stars.”

|

Arendelle’s head of state, its Ice Queen, has to deliver a speech on the evening of winter equinox. In Elsa’s dressing room, while Elsa feels ill, Anna fixes up the heavy carmine cape, fluffs the fur trim.

“Anna, I can’t,” Elsa says, gripped by sudden panic. Anna only beams, brief, brilliant.

“You can,” she says. “Oh, Elsa, you can.”


End file.
